Academic and policy effects of eight early dissertations on gay and lesbian parenting are discussed with a focus on their having been cited at least 234 times in over 50 literature reviews, beginning with Gottman in 1989 and 1990. Most literature reviews, referencing these eight early dissertations and agreeing with Gottman's early conclusions, have reiterated the theme that parenting by gay men or lesbians has outcomes no different than parenting by heterosexual parents. Here it is proposed that certain potential adverse findings may have been obscured by suppressor effects which could have been evaluated had multivariate analyses been implemented. Further, several adverse findings were detected by reanalyzing data where sufficient information was yet available. Some of the dissertations' results (absent controls for social desirability and other differences between homosexual and heterosexual parents) supported the 2001 "no differences" hypothesis discussed by Stacey and Biblarz. Yet, differences were also observed, including some evidence in more recent dissertations, suggesting that parental sexual orientation might be associated with children's later sexual orientation and adult attachment style, among other outcomes. Odds ratios associated with some of the apparent effects were substantial in magnitude as well as statistically significant. Also, more recent research on gay and lesbian parenting continues to be flawed by many of the same limitations as previous research in this area of study, including overlooked suppressor effects.

It seems these studies are done with a predetermined desired conclusion. Watch them coming out in favor of child adult sex, if they haven't already. They wanted us to believe that kids are happier if it makes their parents happier to divorce. B.S.

Except in extreme cases of abuse, kids want to be raised by the people who brought them into the world and know they are committed to each other.

The goal of these studies is to affirm the parents in following their own selfish desires.

What types of childrens behavior would the study deem ABNORMAL or INFERIOR in comparison to children raised in normal households? It just seems to me that the results are entirely subjective to begin with.

My guess is that no study would use such terms as "abnormal" or "inferior." What they would look at are measurable markers of growth and adjustment such as health, school grades, participation in sports, instances of juvenile offenses, instances of teen pregnancy, rate of drug or alcohol use, etcetera. They would then compare these rates among children raised by gays or lesbians against a similar demographic of children raised by married biological parents, arriving at a statistical comparison of the groups studied, not a personal or moral judgment of individuals.

I have a nephew who is homosexual (he and my own kids are in their late 20s now). He was an only child, and his mom was my sister, who was not lesbian herself, but always fascinated by abberant sexual practices and all kinds of sexual misbehavior, and who talked about such things freely around her son from his earliest years. From the time he was about 10 years old, Mr. Adler and I never knew what would come out of my nephew's mouth next. We were always uncomfortable about many things he said in front of our girls, and spoke to them about these being things we didn't say in our family.

But, really that wasn't adequate because there were things we didn't want them to HEAR about either at age 10 or younger, and here they were getting it courtesy of my nephew and indirectly from my sister.

By the time he was a young adult, he and my sister were basically finishing each other's sentences, and his dad was essentially shut out of their relationship. My sister talked about her son being gay so much that it was hard to be around her. I will say for the record also, that my nephew has a hair trigger temper and a self-righteous chip on his shoulder and is a truly unhappy young man, always angry at someone or something. It's nearly impossible to be around him. I can well imagine him picketing some Christian church as we have been seeing recently in the news in CA.

As far as children of homosexual and lesbian couples goes, my experience is limited to a few youngsters, but I observe in the small sample with which I am familiar, the same degree of early six-wiseness and blase attitude toward all sorts of sexual practices that we saw in my nephew. How can that be good for small children? It sure wasn't good for him. He will never have a happy life, and he treats others very badly.

Am I claiming that all kids raised by lesbians or homosexual parents turn out like my nephew? Of course not, but I do think that the potential for unhappy, destructive lives is much higher than average in such homes. That's not fair to small children.

That makes sense. But it still seems to me that there are factors that these objective measurements cannot account for.

I'm not arguing with you. It's just that moral development is subjective and therefore nearly impossible to quantify. But the measures discussed above  health, grades, etc  are indictment enough, if the children raised by gays are found to be lagging behind those raised conventionally, when all the other variables are controlled for (income of parents, type of housing, age of parents, quality of school district, etc).

One of the other posters mentioned that some of the studies show that children raised by homosexuals tend to have a higher rate of homosexual behavior themselves, and that this statistic may indicate that the behavior is learned or influenced, not just hard-wired. "Longitudinal" studies can bring this aspect to light -- studies of a given set of individuals over many years.

A very thoughtful post. I am sorry for your troubles with your sister. Keep praying for your nephew.

I'd like to add that my early career days were in the arts, so naturally I knew quite a few gays and lesbians back in the 70s when they were starting to push out of the closet. Almost every one of them revealed some kind of severe trauma in childhood. (In your nephew's case, a seductive, sexually abusive and neglectful mother.) Death of a parent, parental divorce or abandonment by a parent, rape or incest, or sudden violent death of a teenage opposite-sex love interest were mentioned. There was also bullying from other children over personality factors of dorkiness, sensitivity or high intelligence that should not be considered "gay", but often are by cruel playground taunts or rejection by the opposite sex. One lesbian co-worker confided that she was seduced by a female teacher at age 15. She never even told her parents, which outraged me. By the time I met her she was in her late 30s, and was deeply ensconced in the life -- but also in therapy, taking massive doses of Prozac, and cheating on her "wife".

I heard from a gay male theater producer that he knew he would like to have married a wife and had children, but he realized too late that he had drifted into the gay life as a teenager because it was so ever-present in the arts, and now that he was almost 40, accustomed to being gay and all the social cues and posturing that go with it, he couldn't imagine transforming himself into someone manly enough to attract and hold a woman.

I knew these people in the decade prior to the explosion of AIDS. After the disease hit in 1980, when I was married and had a child (I am a woman), dozens of gay men that I knew from art school, ad agency work and even church choirs began to die off -- some by suicide to save themselves the trouble of dying horribly later. Others who could manage to, married women and had children, and denounced or denied their former lives. I ran into one of the old lezzies at a school function in the late 80s to which she had taken her child, and her eyes pled with me not to "tell" what I knew about her past. (No problem -- I was glad she had seen the light.)

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